African legislatures remain understudied, yet democratisation, development and peacebuilding all depend on these key political institutions. This book provides an in-depth analysis of Ethiopia’s parliament, a country of key political and strategic importance to the whole region. In 1931, Ethiopia’s monarchical government introduced a system of parliamentary democracy with seemingly contradictory objectives; it wanted to legitimize its rule in a changing world, and also needed to provide a respectable retirement vocation (as senators and deputies) to sections of the aristocracy it ousted from power. This paradox of recognizing the parliament as essential to modern governance yet deliberately seeking weak institutions that are unable or unwilling to challenge those in power continues to haunt the parliament to this day. Ethiopia continues to struggle to maintain political stability, and the separation of power between government and parliament and a system of checks and balances are yet to substantially flourish. Drawing on extensive original data gathered from interviews and surveys, this book investigates the legal and practical status of federal representative institutions in Ethiopia from 1931 up to and including 2021. It delves into the rules and routines of parliament, its contextually and historically grounded culture of representation, and the techniques of manoeuvring executive bureaucracies. The book also aims to understand the extent of civil dis/engagement and the perceptions and role of citizens in shaping parliament, and how the mandates and functions of individual MPs are also determined by cultural and socio-economic factors such as gender, population, inequality and conflict. This book’s in-depth and original analysis will be of interest to researchers across African studies, politics, development, and governance.

Discussing an armed insurgency in Ethiopia (1963-1970), this study offers a new perspective for understanding relations between religion and ethnicity.

From a war-torn and famine-plagued country at the beginning of the 1990s, Ethiopia is today emerging as one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa. Growth in Ethiopia has surpassed that of every other sub-Saharan country over the past decade and is forecast by the International Monetary Fund to exceed 8 percent over the next two years. The government has set its eyes on transforming the country into a middle-income country by 2025, and into a leading manufacturing hub in Africa. The Oxford Handbook of the Ethiopian Economy studies this country's unique model of development, where the state plays a central role, and where a successful industrialization drive has challenged the long-held erroneous assumption that industrial policy will never work in poor African countries. While much of the volume is focused on post-1991 economic development policy and strategy, the analysis is set against the background of the long history of Ethiopia, and more specifically on the Imperial period that ended in 1974, the socialist development experiment of the Derg regime between 1974 and 1991, and the policies and strategies of the current EPRDF government that assumed power in 1991. Including a range of contributions from both academic and professional standpoints, this volume is a key reference work on the economy of Ethiopia.

This 1988 text traces the continuities between revolutionary Ethiopia and the development of a centralised Ethiopian state since the nineteenth century.

This book provides a study of contemporary politics in Ethiopia through an empirical focus on language policy, citizenship, ethnic identity, and gender. It is unique in its focus not only on the political institutions of Ethiopia and the history of the country but in that it studies these subjects at the intersection of both modern and historical time periods. In particular, it argues that meaningful citizenship, which is much more than the legal state of being a citizen, is a process of citizens and the state negotiating the practice of citizenship. Therefore, it puts the citizen back at the forefront of the process of expanding citizenship, suggesting the ways that citizens support, resist, and affect state policy on political rights.

Written lucidly and simply to serve as an introduction to the study of the African continent from a human population perspective, this book demonstrates important factors in the ebb and flow of group size and structure using the example of the fastest growing region in the world. From a total original population of less than a quarter million in prehistoric times to the present count of 642 million people in 1990, Africa is now demonstrating an annual growth rate of 3.0%, the highest on the planet. While the rest of the world's population is expected to increase by 60%, Africa's is expected to increase by 100%, doubling by the year 2025 to a projected total of 1.6 billion people. The major factor creating the high growth rate is the drop in death rates while the fertility rates remain high. Stress on the population has been related to urbanization which has increased since African countries attained independence in the 1960s. Employment opportunities in cities are inadequate and slum conditions have appeared around most major cities. Since agriculture remains the major industry and occupation, rural development policies are seen to hold the most promise for stemming urban migration and reducing famine and poverty.

Ethiopia has experienced impressive agricultural growth and poverty reduction, stemming in part from substantial public investments in agriculture. Yet, the agriculture sector now faces increasing land and water constraints along with other challenges to growth. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System: Past Trends, Present Challenges, and Future Scenarios presents a forward-looking analysis of Ethiopia’s agrifood system in the context of a rapidly changing economy. Growth in the agriculture sector remains essential to continued poverty reduction in Ethiopia and will depend on sustained investment in the agrifood system, especially private sector investment. Many of the policies for a successful agricultural and rural development strategy for Ethiopia are relevant for other African countries, as well. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System should be a valuable resource for policymakers, development specialists, and others concerned with economic development in Africa south of the Sahara.

This handbook provides a comprehensive account of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, exploring both their structures and features and their function and use in society. The first part of the volume provides background and general information relating to Ethiopian languages, including their demographic distribution and classification, language policy, scripts and writing, and language endangerment. Subsequent parts are dedicated to the four major language families in Ethiopia - Cushitic, Ethiosemitic, Nilo-Saharan, and Omotic - and contain studies of individual languages, with an initial introductory overview chapter in each part. Both major and less-documented languages are included, ranging from Amharic and Oromo to Zay, Gawwada, and Yemsa. The final part explores languages that are outside of those four families, namely Ethiopian Sign Language, Ethiopian English, and Arabic. With its international team of senior researchers and junior scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages will appeal to anyone interested in the languages of the region and in African linguistics more broadly.

This book is a social—ecological system description and feedback analysis of the Lake Tana Basin, the headwater catchment of the Upper Blue Nile River. This basin is an important local, national, and international resource, and concern about its sustainable development is growing at many levels. Lake Tana Basin outflows of water, sediments, nutrients, and contaminants affect water that flows downstream in the Blue Nile across international boundaries into the Nile River; the lake and surrounding land have recently been proposed as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve; the basin has been designated as a key national economic growth corridor in the Ethiopian Growth and Transformation Plan. In spite of the Lake Tana Basin’s importance, there is no comprehensive, integrated, system-wide description of its characteristics and dynamics that can serve as a basis for its sustainable development. This book presents both the social and ecological characteristics of the region and an integrated, system-wide perspective of the feedback links that shape social and ecological change in the basin. Finally, it summarizes key research needs for sustainable development.

"The heated Malthusian-Bosrupian debates still rage over consequences of high population growth, rapid urbanization, dense rural populations and young age structures in the face of drought, poverty, food insecurity, environmental degradation, climate change, instability and the global economic crisis. However, while facile generalizations about the lack of demographic change and lack of progress in meeting the MDGs in sub-Saharan Africa are commonplace, they are often misleading and belie the socio-cultural change that is occurring among a vanguard of more educated youth. Even within Ethiopia, the second largest country at the Crossroads of Africa and the Middle East, different narratives emerge from analysis of longitudinal, micro-level analysis as to how demographic change and responses are occurring, some more rapidly than others. The book compares Ethiopia with other Africa countries, and demonstrates the uniqueness of an African-type demographic transition: a combination of poverty-related negative factors (unemployment, disease, food insecurity) along with positive education, health and higher age-of-marriage trends that are pushing this ruggedly rural and land-locked population to accelerate the demographic transition and stay on track to meet most of the MDGs. This book takes great care with the challenges of inadequate data and weak analytical capacity to research this incipient transition, trying to unravel some of the complexities in this vulnerable Horn of Africa country: A slowly declining population growth rates with rapidly declining child mortality, very high chronic under-nutrition, already low urban fertility but still very high rural fertility; and high population-resource pressure along with rapidly growing small urban places”